Australian Thomas Kean is managing editor of the English-language edition of the Myanmar Times, a weekly newspaper. He has worked in Myanmar for several years, and had a front row seat to the country’s reform and how it has been covered by the international press.

All of The Messenger Band’s young female singers are former workers in Cambodia’s sizeable garment industry. Their songs are about toiling factory workers, farmers who can’t make payments to middle men, and female laborers who turn to prostitution because their factory wages are insufficient to make ends meet.